Two men are hunched over on chairs at a downtown homeless shelter, talking quietly and looking a bit beaten down, when a two-year-old Labernese approaches and sits before them.

First, there are smiles. Then, unprompted, Argon extends his right paw to one of them. The men look at each other. Laughter erupts.

“This dog blows me away,” Yvan Lafleur, 52, says a few minutes later.

The first time he met the dog, Lafleur says, Argon came up to him without hesitating, sat between his feet and put his head straight up, asking to be petted.

It was the kind of unreserved affection Lafleur has rarely experienced. Raised by an abusive and alcoholic father, he’s spent years drifting in and out of homelessness in Montreal.

“I’m a bit borderline, you know what I mean?” he says. “Sometimes I get really down, sometimes I’m really happy.”

But whichever mood Lafleur finds himself in — talkative or isolated, joyous or angry — Argon seems to always strike the right tone.

Bred and trained by the MIRA Foundation, best known for its guide and service dogs, Argon is the first dog assigned full time to a homeless shelter in Quebec.

His presence alone has been soothing ever since, Lafleur says.

“It’s easier to talk to him. He just listens. He doesn’t argue back or cut you off,” he says. “And sometimes that’s all you need.”

Jennyfer Gosselin, a counsellor at Maison du Pere, takes Argon to visit Yvan Lafleur, left, and Claude Lefebvre. She has seen first-hand the positive effects the dog has had on the homeless since his arrival in August.Pierre Obendrauf /
Montreal Gazette

Gilles Gingras, a dog trainer with the MIRA Foundation, walks into the Maison du Père homeless centre and braces himself.

When he was here three weeks ago, Argon ran up and circled him, swinging his back hips into Gingras’s legs for attention. He paced nervously and groaned. His leash got tangled in everything.

But now Argon walks down the stairs near the centre’s main entrance, heeling next to Jennyfer Gosselin, a 26-year-old special care counsellor.

Argon notices Gingras and is visibly excited, but there’s none of the commotion from last time. Instead, he calmly sits beside him, tilting his head upward. His paws barely patter against the floor.

“Now that’s progress!” Gingras says. “He understands his role now.”

The Maison du Père, on René-Lévesque Blvd. E., is a mixed complex that operates a shelter, a long-term residence for older homeless men, a social reintegration wing, health care units, emergency units and four palliative care rooms.

Argon has been at the Maison du Père since August after being chosen and trained by MIRA at its facilities in Ste-Madeleine, about 50 kilometres east of Montreal.

“He had all the qualities we were looking for,” Gingras says.

“I haven’t seen another dog like him in the last year. He’s affectionate, easy to control, doesn’t like controversy. He’s not anxious, he’s not afraid.”

Gosselin, one of three employees who handle Argon at the centre, was sent to Ste-Madeleine for one week of training.

Unsure of how the shelter’s clientele would react to having a dog around, she was a bit nervous upon returning.

“We didn’t want to do anything that was bad for the dog, or anything that would be bad for the guys,” she says. “We tried to find a balance between the two and respect both.”

Before Argon was introduced, staff members fixed a pamphlet to a bulletin board near the main entrance. It laid out a set of rules.

Some were straightforward — don’t feed him table food, don’t smoke around him, don’t ask him to do any tricks. Some were more strict — ask permission before petting him, don’t try to get his attention without first asking the staff member.

Six months later, those constraints are hard to notice around the shelter.

In part, that’s because Gingras wants it that way. For Argon to be most effective, he says, he needed to feel less tense — keep him on a leash less often, let the men interact with him more naturally.

“Allow him to be a dog,” Gosselin says.

And in part it’s because of how well Argon has been accepted, almost from the start.

“Argon is the best idea this place could have had,” said Claude Lefebvre, 62, while sitting in a common area near the back of the shelter.

Lefebvre has a long, scraggly grey beard that blends into his hair. A few days before Christmas, he’s wearing an elf hat and a matching green sweater.

He’s come to the shelter each morning for the last two years to make the beds. It started as imposed community work, but now he says he does it because he wants to.

He feels Argon especially helps the men who have a hard time opening up to others.

He doesn’t want to talk about his own life or struggles with homelessness — “things are going well,” is all he offers — but he’s glad to talk about Argon.

“He allows people to create a link, to interact and live a little piece of a normal life,” he says.

“I know he’ll help a lot of people. He already is helping.”

Argon arrives at Maison du Père each morning between 8 and 9. For now, he sleeps at a foster family’s house, to help reinforce when he’s at work. Eventually, the plan is to have him sleep at the centre.

Argon starts his day by visiting what’s referred to as the recovery room, where men are recuperating from illnesses, surgeries or hospital stays. Gosselin brings Argon around to see if any of them would like to spend some time with him. Most do.

Then Argon is brought down to the laundry area, where many of the men who use the centre’s services do volunteer work.

“Early mornings aren’t always easy for the guys,” Gosselin says, “so it’s a good way to start the day.”

Around noon, Gosselin will bring Argon for a 30-minute walk outside. In the early afternoon, he’ll sit in with visiting nurses as they check up on the men’s health or deliver results from tests. Many of the men suffer from diabetes or kidney, heart or lung issues.

Often, Gosselin says, the news isn’t good; having Argon in the room can lighten the mood.

The shelter section of Maison du Père opens its doors at 2 p.m. each day. Men are filtered before being let in. For those who are intoxicated, the shelter offers a shuttle service to other resources. Those who are let in can shower and use Maison du Père’s services.

The rest of Argon’s day is mostly spent in the shelter’s common rooms, interacting with men who’ve come to spend the night.

Watching from a distance, but never too far away, Gosselin often notices men bending over to whisper something to Argon. She doesn’t always hear what they’re saying to him, nor does it matter to her.

As long as they’re getting out whatever it is they feel the need to talk about, even if it’s only to Argon, she knows it’s better than keeping it inside and letting it fester.

For some, it’s as simple as talking about their day, explaining what they did, who they saw.

It’s often the men who won’t speak with counsellors, Gosselin says, who open up to Argon.

“These are men who have often been marginalized,” she says. “Some have been betrayed so many times in life that they can’t talk to other humans.

“Even with us, they know we’re here to help, that we do this because we like to and want what’s best for them, but it’s still difficult for them to talk.”

But with Argon, she says, there’s no judgment or negative reactions. There’s no nonverbal communication or facial expressions to read. He can’t repeat anything. He won’t betray them.

“They only get love,” she says, “and the understanding that comes with it.”

For now, Argon overnights at a foster familyâs house, but the plan is to have him sleep at the shelter eventually.Pierre Obendrauf /
Montreal Gazette

Gosselin wasn’t exactly skeptical of what Argon would bring to the centre at first, but she wasn’t sure what it would look like in practice.

On any given day, there are a lot of combustible elements at play. Nearly 200 men filter in each afternoon, many with mental-health disorders and a few in distress.

Gosselin knew some of the men have had and lost dogs while living on the street. She knew a lot of them had dogs as children, and having one around now could open old wounds. Same for men who lost everything at once: jobs, houses, families. That often included losing their pets at the same time.

Would a dog now trigger positive or negative reactions?

Around the beginning of winter, a man showed up at the shelter, clearly intoxicated and demanding to speak with a counsellor.

He was let inside because of the cold weather but grew aggressive as soon as he was.

Gosselin could tell the pressure was mounting. Try to defuse the crisis, she thought, remembering her training.

She approached him, keeping Argon behind her. Unsure of how the man would react to a dog, she made sure there was a room nearby she could slip Argon into if the situation took a bad turn. She knew it could go either way.

But there were no explosions.

“There’s a dog?” the man asked when Gosselin approached.

All of a sudden, he lowered his tone. He started petting Argon, and in doing so, broke down in sobs and tears.

All the aggression from seconds earlier disappeared. Gosselin was able to speak with him and direct him toward the resources he needed to make it through the day.

Argon never flinched throughout the intervention. Gosselin remembers him wagging his tail. He then calmly followed her back into the shelter, where other men were waiting.

‘Thrilled with the results so far’

In 2016, the MIRA Foundation trained a black Labrador named Kanak for the Sherbrooke police force. The idea was based on some of the work MIRA’s service dogs were already doing during visits in youth centres. The police force hoped Kanak would be a comforting presence for minors who were victims of abuse or survived trauma.

The project was a success. Kanak has since helped children open up about what they’ve been through, the dog sitting by them while they give statements to police and even accompanying them to testify in courtrooms.

In 2017, the Sûreté du Québec added two dogs from the Mira Foundation — Kevlar and Sundae — for a similar purpose: to help victims or witnesses of violent or sexual crimes.

It was after hearing about those projects that the Maison du Père contacted the foundation, said MIRA general director Nicolas St-Pierre. The centre hoped to apply the same idea to the homeless men who use its services to help them open up to counsellors.

“The advantage of having a dog somewhere full time, rather than having one visit once in a while, is the links that are created,” St-Pierre said. “It also allows specialists to apply the dog to their own specific programs.”

Training a dog for this kind of role costs roughly $25,000 and takes up to three months. MIRA’s dogs typically serve eight years before retiring, St-Pierre said.

Argon’s stay with the Maison du Père is considered a pilot project, whose costs are covered by donations. St-Pierre said he would be glad to see it expanded to other organizations helping the homeless.

“Everyone involved has been thrilled with the results so far,” he said. “If there are any other requests, from anywhere in Canada, we’re open to hearing them.”

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